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Kenya: Why Our Medics Flee
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The Nation (Nairobi)
EDITORIAL
28 March 2008
Posted to the web 28 March 2008
Nairobi
Poverty and disease have, for a long time, been synonymous with this continent.
Disease stalks the land, and yet there are very few doctors or nurses to go round. The former have fled their mother countries to seek better-paying jobs abroad, while the latter are busy pushing wheel-chairs in nursing homes, or cleaning after incontinent octogenarians in the same countries.
The one thing these categories of emigrants have in common is that despite their professional training, they are paid pittance by their governments, and expected to show their patriotism by sticking around.
Health professionals who have been meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, asked themselves some hard questions, and conceded that lack of research facilities, poor pay, and other hardships have made it impossible for governments to attract doctors and nurses.
Meeting under the auspices of the Second East Africa Health and Scientific Conference, the experts concluded that a policy imposed by the International Monetary Fund in the 1990s prescribing a freeze on hiring of health personnel was to blame.
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However, there was no excuse for sticking with a prescription that only succeeded in robbing poor countries of the few health personnel they had.
Trying to apportion blame will not help East Africa. Paying doctors more than clerks, and nurses more than househelps will certainly do the trick.
Improve their conditions of work, and they will remain in East Africa where the climate is great, the people friendly, and diseases to treat many.
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